The Commission establishes sentencing policies and practices for the federal courts. Each year, the Commission reviews and refines these policies in light of congressional action, decisions from courts of appeals, sentencing-related research, and input from the criminal justice community.

In this section, you can follow the Commission’s work through the amendment cycle as priorities are set, research is performed, testimony is heard, and amendments are adopted.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission is an independent agency in the judicial branch that was created as part of the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984. Commissioners are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. The Attorney General, or the Attorney General’s designee, and the Chair of the U.S. Parole Commission serve as ex officio, nonvoting members of the Commission.

In this section, learn about the Commission’s mission, structure, and ongoing work.

Annual National Seminar on the Federal Sentencing Guidelines
September 7-9, 2016
Minneapolis, MN

Day One: Wednesday, September 7, 2016

ADVANCED GUIDELINE ISSUES

In this scenario-based course, participants will use an audience response system to produce real-time, anonymous test results. This session will address challenging guideline application questions covering numerous sections of the guidelines including ex post facto, criminal history, and undischarged terms of imprisonment, among others. Some of the topics will be covered in greater depth during other courses throughout the seminar.

This course is designed for those new to the guidelines, including probation officers and attorneys with two years or less experience working with the Sentencing Guidelines. Topics include determining the applicable guideline, chapter by chapter application of the Guidelines Manual, interactions between statutes and guidelines, including mandatory minimums. This course uses an audience response system to produce real-time, anonymous test results throughout the course.

This course presumes an understanding of basic relevant conduct principles. Cross references and multiple-count cases with different offense types (money laundering and tax, drugs and firearms) will be addressed using scenarios and examples to gain an understanding of the interaction between different relevant conduct principles. Attendees will be better able to avoid common pitfalls in more complicated cases.

This course will focus on several frequently-litigated topics, including application of Johnson to the sentencing guidelines, recent Supreme Court cases, including Mathis, recent court decisions on whether specific statutes constitute crimes of violence or controlled substance offenses for career offender and Armed Career Criminal cases, conditions of supervised release, and restitution.

What are the acts the defendant is accountable for in a single defendant case? What are the acts the defendant accountable for in an offense involving multiple participants? Students will leave this course with the ability to conduct a basic relevant conduct analysis, including an individualized relevant conduct determination in large multi-defendant cases. By the end of this course, you will know the difference between relevant conduct and expanded relevant conduct, the definitions of “same course of conduct, common scheme or plan” and “jointly undertaken criminal activity,” and you will understand the interaction between relevant conduct and criminal history.

This course will address the statutes and rules governing restitution, determining who is a victim, which harms are compensable, the difference between mandatory and discretionary restitution, and restitution in schemes and conspiracies. Special attention will be paid to common pitfalls resulting in appellate court reversals of restitution orders.

Exploration of more advanced criminal history rules and how they affect determination of the criminal history score through use of scenarios. These include sentenced imposed upon revocation, single/separate sentences, special rules for career offenders, and 924(c) offenses.

Attendees will leave this course with an understanding of the steps necessary to analyze whether a prior conviction may be used as a predicate offense for recidivist enhancements such as career offender and Armed Career Criminal. The step-by-step instruction will guide students through the new categorical approach post-Mathis, with an emphasis on determining whether the statute at issue is divisible.

This session will use scenarios and an audience response system to demonstrate basic application principles of the criminal history rules. Topics include assignment of points, determination of sentence length, applicable time frames for counting prior sentences, excluded offense types, and the interplay between criminal history and relevant conduct.

Grouping involves determining a single offense level in cases involving multiple counts of conviction. Instructors will demystify grouping by giving participants a decision tree for determining when grouping rules apply and by using scenarios to practice applying the rules. The course will address grouping rules for cases involving a single composite harm, the assignment of units for cases involving separate harms, and cases involving multiple grouping rules.

Stump the Trainer! This will be a highly interactive session giving the audience an opportunity to ask their most difficult guidelines questions. Participants may submit questions before the session by using the Q&A feature on the mobile app for the seminar, or by submitting handwritten questions at the registration desk.

Speakers:

Alan Dorhoffer

Krista Rubin

WELCOMING RECEPTION

Speakers:

Kelly Mitchell

Day Two: Thursday, September 8, 2016

PLENARY SESSION: Commission Update, Tips from the Bench

The Commissioners will discuss recent commission activities. The panel of judges will discuss tips from the bench.

This course will focus on several frequently-litigated topics, including application of Johnson to the sentencing guidelines, recent Supreme Court cases, including Mathis, recent court decisions on whether specific statutes constitute crimes of violence or controlled substance offenses for career offender and Armed Career Criminal cases, conditions of supervised release, and restitution.

This course on the §2D1.1 guideline is appropriate for beginners and advanced guideline users alike. Topics include most frequently asked questions about application of the drug guideline, such as the enhancement for maintaining a premises, marijuana equivalencies in single and multiple drug cases, use of actual drug weight or mixtures in pill and other cases, accountability for jointly undertaken criminal activity and conspiracies, and unlisted drugs such as methylone and synthetic marijuana.

Participants will work through examples and scenarios to learn special rules for determining loss in commonly occurring fraud offenses, such as those involving credit cards, health care fraud, investment schemes, government benefits programs, and identity theft.

The presenters, consisting of a district court judge, a prosecutor, and an assistant federal public defender, will discuss different practices around the country with respect to guideline departures and variances, binding guilty pleas under Fed.R.Crim.Pro. 11(c)(1)(C), and effective advocacy for prosecutors and defense attorneys arguing for a sentence outside the guideline range.

This course will highlight the adopted amendments to the smuggling and illegal reentry guidelines effective November 1, 2016. Using interactive scenarios, this session will focus in particular on application of the newly revised guideline at §2L1.2 (Illegal Reentry) and the criminal history rules that are key to correct application of the new guideline. *Note, this session will not include discussion of the categorical approach.

This session will focus on recent amendments to §2G2.2 (Child Pornography) and §3A1.1 (Vulnerable Victim) and will include a discussion of commonly occurring specific offense characteristics in the sex offense guidelines, including pattern of activity and file sharing. Grouping of multiple counts including production, possession, and solicitation offenses, and treatment of multiple victims in sex trafficking offenses will also be addressed. Instructors will use hypotheticals to demonstrate proper application of the guidelines in this area.

The interactive panel discussion will explore emerging technological trends in cybercrime and child exploitation cases. The federal criminal justice system is increasingly confronted with new and evolving law violations executed in cyberspace and practitioners are challenged with a gap in understanding these technically complex platforms. This program will attempt to fill the knowledge gap, providing participants with information about the dark web; digital currency; file-sharing networks; social media and more. The panel will discuss these emerging digital platforms and their implications in federal sentencing practice.

Though this session will cover both aggravating and mitigating role adjustments, emphasis is placed on the mitigating role adjustment, as amended two years ago. Using fact patterns of increasing complexity, this session will focus attention on the factors relevant to determine when a mitigating role adjustment might be appropriate.

The presenters will discuss the Commission’s recent amendment emphasizing substantial financial harm to victims of economic crimes, determining who is a victim, ordering restitution, and other issues related to economic crimes requiring complex determinations related to victims.

This course will answer frequently asked questions about the firearms trafficking enhancement, distinctions between the cross reference and the applicable enhancement when the firearm is used in connection with another offense, and 924(c) offenses, among others.

This panel presentation will cover the primary rules of legal ethics generally applicable to defense counsel and prosecutors in criminal cases but also will deal specifically with the ethical issues arising in the federal sentencing context. The presentation will include several realistic hypothetical cases raising ethical issues related to sentencing.

Stump the Trainer! This will be a highly interactive session giving the audience an opportunity to ask their most difficult guidelines questions. Participants may submit questions before the session by using the Q&A feature on the mobile app for the seminar, or by submitting handwritten questions at the registration desk.

Speakers:

Alan Dorhoffer

Krista Rubin

INTERVIEW W/THE INSPECTOR GENERAL OF THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE

USSC General Counsel Grilli will interview Inspector General Horowitz regarding recent OIG reports examining issues related to the Bureau of Prisons, including release of inmates, monitoring of contract prisons, and medical staffing.

Senior social science researchers from the Commission’s Office of Research and Data will present results from recent Commission studies, most notably on recidivism, and will preview future research publications.

Speakers:

Kim Hunt

Tracey Kyckelhahn

Louis Reedt

PROBATION OFFICERS FORUM

Officers will have the opportunity to discuss inter-district coordination of resources for supervisees, development and implementation of the new workload formula, the findings of the Commission’s Tribal Issues Advisory Group, and in-district training opportunities.